Nature provides many resources that can be used to reduce dependence on coal, oil, gas, and nuclear for powering our homes, offices, factories, and modes of transportation. Solar and wind power have been the most used natural resources to supplement coal, oil, gas, and nuclear for powering and heating homes, offices, and factories. Prototypes for gathering energy from waves and tides have also been constructed and are being evaluated as a supplement to coal, oil, gas and nuclear as well. Solar powered photovoltaic (PV) cells have shown the most promise when it comes to providing power for transportation and seemingly are a good fit with current electric car technology. In addition, much work has been done in the area of rooftop solar PV cells for supplementing the grid.1 1P. Fairley, “How Rooftop Solar Can Stabilize the Grid,” IEEE Spectrum, February 2015, p 10.
There is another natural resource that has not been mined as an alternate source of energy: the earth's magnetic field. With average field strength approximately 0.5×10−4 Tesla (T) around the world, it is easy to see why this resource has been overlooked. If a system to mine the earth's magnetic field is developed for a power plant using moving electrical wire after Faraday then Maxwell, even the most efficient aluminum wire requires an impractical length to generate a small amount of power at a usable voltage. As good as the electrical properties of aluminum wire are, they are not sufficient for this application. It is clear that a disruptive technology is needed to mine the earth's magnetic field for power plants in lieu of coal, nuclear, wind and solar resources.
Such a disruptive technology, graphene,2 is now at an early stage of development. Graphene has excellent electrical properties in the form of high conductivity and low resistivity, is extremely strong and durable, and is relatively inexpensive. It is now being produced in sheets3 large enough to be used for EcoCharge. In addition, MIT is setting up an industrial scale graphene printing press in its graphene lab4 and Purdue University spin-off BlueVine Graphene Industries, Inc.5 now produces roll-to-roll graphene. The unique feature of graphene for mining the earth's magnetic field is its ability to conduct electricity in low resistivity, two-dimensional sheets. In effect, graphene is a two-dimensional “wire” that will generate current proportional to its resistivity, area, and orientation and motion with respect to the earth's magnetic field. As will be shown below, these properties provide a significant multiplier to earth's weak magnetic field yielding a feasible source of ecologically clean electric power for power plants. Not only is it ecologically clean but it is constant, day and night, solving the rooftop solar regulation problem detailed in Fairley (1) resulting from night time loss of sunlight. 2The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, “Scientific Background on the Nobel Prize in Physics 2010,” Kungl. Vetenskaps-Akademien, 5 Oct. 2010.3http://www.graphene-info.com/sony-developed-new-r2r-method-make-graphene-produced-100-meter-long-sheet4http://idealab.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/09/mit-setting-up-industrial-scale-graphene-printing-press.php5http://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2014/Q3/purdue-based-startup-scales-up-graphene-production,-develops-biosensors-and-supercapacitors.html
EcoCharge units convert earth's magnetic field to electrical current continuously powering a power plant6. The basic EcoCharge concept of using graphene for the conversion medium was taught by U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/847,445 (EcoCharge). Many of the present EcoCharge Power Plant implementation techniques are also taught by U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/847,445 and will be noted herein. As will be shown below, the EcoCharge Power Plant implementation is enough different from U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/847,445 to warrant a separate patent application. For the vehicle mounted application, Ser. No. 13/847,445, EcoCharge units are mounted on the axles and driveshaft of the vehicle, orthogonal to one another and with obvious size and weight restrictions, in order to generate electrical power when the vehicle is moving at any orientation to the earth's magnetic field. For the present power plant application, EcoCharge units will be “stationary” and mounted at 0° to the earth's magnetic field to maximize the conversion process. Note that EcoCharge units in the power plant can be mounted on moveable bases to allow for moving the units to maintain the desired 0° orientation with the earth's magnetic field as it changes in the future. 6Power plant is a general category including plants supplying power to the grid or to various sized users or groups of users.